The sale of the Shea Scottsdale shopping center just outside Phoenix helps explain a curious phenomenon taking place in retail real estate.

On one hand, one would expect investors to be shunning grocery-anchored shopping centers, which have been suffering from high vacancy and anemic rent growth. New competitors have surfaced, including online shopping and monster retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., that offer aisles of discounted food.

On the other hand, so far this year investors have snapped up $7.9 billion of retail centers with supermarkets, sending volume up 68% from the $4.7 billion sold in all of 2010, though the level is still well below the peak in 2007, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc., a real-estate research firm. The U.S. sales volume of all other retail properties rose 32% to $20.8 billion this year to date, from $15.7 billion in all 2010....."It's a question of betting on the right grocer in the right location," says Ben Carlos Thypin, director of market analysis with Real Capital.Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203658804576637400614107410.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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Ben Carlos Thypin

I am currently the co-founder of Quantierra, the world's first data driven real estate brokerage and investment manager. In my former life as Director of Market Analysis at Real Capital Analytics, I worked with press outlets large and small to provide them with great data and insightful commentary. Here are some of the results of this collaboration. For the rest, please check out the News Archive.